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Emerson was a buddhist

From Ralph Waldo Emerson's journal, 1836:

The brilliant & warm day let me out this morn. into the wood & to Goose Pond. Amid the many colored trees I thought what principles I might lay down as the foundations of this Course of Lectures I shall read to my fellow citizens.

1. There is a relation between man & nature so that whatever is in matter is in mind.

2. It is a necessity of the human nature that it should express itself outwardly & embody its thought.

As all creatures are allured to reproduce themselves, so must the thought be imparted in Speech. The more profound the thought, the more burdensome. What is in will out. Action is as great a pleasure & cannot be forborne.

3. It is the constant endeavor of the mind to idealize the actual, to accommodate the shows of things to the desires of the mind. Hence architecture & all art.

4. It is the constant tendency of the mind to Unify all it beholds, or to reduce the remotest facts to a single law. Hence all endeavors at classification.

5. There is a parallel tendency / corresponding Unity in nature which makes this just, as in the composition of the compound shell, or leaf, or animal from few elements.

6. There is a tendency in the mind to separate particulars & in magnifying them to lose sight of the connexion of the object with the Whole. Hence all false views, Sects;

7. Underneath all Appearances & causing all appearances are certain eternal laws which we call the Nature of Things.